Ever since i bought my 04' TL to daily drive (currently has 165,000 miles), i have just been running into issue after issue with this thing. I bought the car and they put brand new tires on it..but the wrong size tire and wrong speed rating (not a huge deal) they were 225 instead of 235 but i got a bubble in one of my tires and changed it out to a firestone firehawk 225 to match the rest of the tires. I got tired of the wrong size tire being on there (im a perfectionist) and saw firestone had a killer deal on tires over the holidays. I got 4 tires (firestone firehawk oval 235/45/17) installed for 400 bucks!! then got an alignment. We recently got snow here in VA and i started to notice on the cold mornings that my passenger side tire feels like its out of balance or something its VERY noticeable and almost feels like im going over bumps. Tire looks normal, and they are BRAND NEW. The wobbling goes away after a couple miles of driving and is all normal, but this is driving me crazy. I have to do a timing belt service so thats putting me out a lot of money and dont really have much more im willing to put into this now considered piece of shit. Please help..

 

^the car isnt the piece of shit.

its the tires. duh.
you cant blame the car for having the wrong set of tires nor can you blame the car for having a wobbly tire.

have you gone through some trouble shooting?
because it sounds like you expect us to diagnose the problem without giving any sorts of details.

are your tires all properly inflated?
is your alignment spot on?

Also, go back to firestone and explain your problem

 

Before blaming the car: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....Speed+Rated%29

check out the Reviews tab. Looks like these are crap tires.

If you need tires on a bottom barel budget, try Falken 912s or America's tire equivalent (612s).

 

firestone said they were new tires and there is one bad review. and for details how much further can i describe it to you. I told you my symptoms and was looking for feed back not criticism, and they have the right size tire and speed rating on there now, not previously. And it would help if you could at least point me in the right direction as what to troubleshoot. And yes they are properly inflated..

 

I am helping.
what are the tires inflated to?

and if its only one tire thats doing it, i'd go back to firestone.


theres really not much we can tell you.

 

32psi

 

^so, when driving; how long does it take to get rid of the wobbling?

 

if your previous set didnt wobble and now one wobbles; the evidence points to that one tire.


you can try rotating the tire to pinpoint if that tire is really the culprit.

 

about 5 mins of driving. it starts off strong and goes back to a normal feeling after 2-3 miles

 

would your advise be to go back to firestone and get them to check it out under warranty?

 

 

this tells me that either the tire isnt warm enough to handle the conditions of the road.
and or its NOT properly inflated.

YES.
as its a problem with the TIRE.
you didnt do anything wrong; the tire might be defective.

 

ok ill do that this afternoon, thanks for your help. Ill keep yall posted.

 

so with your wrong size tire you had no vibration issues. You changed tires and got vibration issues. There's a relationship there. You should go back and have them replicate the problem. Is there a 30 day satisfaction guarantee? If so return them and choose something else.

 

thats right, i had no vibration issues with the wrong size tires. Also the car felt great after install of new tires it was just after it started getting really cold (been about 20 degrees here this week) that the problem came about.

 

seems like the tires arent getting enough traction/ are cold.
once a few cycles to warm them up, the "wobbling" goes away... correct?

 

yep that is correct sir! think it could be a defective tire??

 

Nismo, I get the same thing in cold weather with my Bridgestones. Slight thump-thump that quickly smoothes out. I wrote it off to cold-weather flat spotting, i.e. tire temporarily retaining flat spot from sitting overnight. When I was in Alaska driving in -50*F weather, it took a long time for the flat spots to smooth out. Some tires just work better than others in cold weather because of their particular rubber compound. My 2 cents FWIW...

 

Sorry, did you say -50 weather?!!!!!

 

Thanks! I took it to firestone and they said it was the cold and that mixed with the particularly hard tire compound my tires are made up of makes for a rough ride till they warm up. So your on point! Thanks for your help guys!

 

Back when the 3g first came out this forum was full of this complaint. It's the tire flat spotting overnight. It takes a little driving to warm the tires and work the flat spot out. I've never experienced this with any other car but the TL is very sensitive to anything having to do with tires such as noise, vibration, wear, etc.

I have soft tires and I have the vibration for anywhere from 2-5 minutes. Not much you can do about it besides change tires but you can't guarantee a new tire will fix it because you don't know the compound composition of the old or the new tires. I thought running 2 sizes wider (255) might help spread out the load better and have less flat spotting but it didn't make much of a difference. It could also be that the only 235s I've ever run on this car were stock (and they also flat spotted as did many stock tires) and every 255 has been performance oriented.

 

Tires with sidewalls designated as "XL" (extra-load) won't flat-spot as easily overnight. Also, running higher cold tire pressure will reduce the flat-spotting.

Personally, I like to run OEM-spec pressure during the winter to soften up the suspension a little; in the summer I'll go 36-40psi. My tires have "SL" (standard load) sidewalls and take some heat to get rid of the flat-spots. A couple hard braking events help put heat into the tires quickly.

 

DAMNNNNNN

 

did you increase the font size so we wouldnt be distracted by your avatar ?

 

but you have the same 4 tires and its only occurring on 1

 

I usually just ignore it when people say a vibration or noise is coming from a certain wheel. I've seen it too many times when not only is the noise or vibration not coming from the tire they thought it was, it's not even on the same axle. It probably seems to him that it's the one tire when in reality it's both fronts.

For the others, I've never really thought of a sidewall being a large contributor of flat spots, I've always thought of the rubber being the cause of flat spotting.

 

IHC is right. Tires are just flat spotting overnight. If you still have doubts read this:

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete....jsp?techid=42

 

The tires did the same thing for me for about ~4 min or so the other night. I'm from Richmond too! Where are you going to get your timing belt job done at??

 

im satisfied that its just overnight flat spotting, and im not concerned anymore. Also it could very well be both fronts or all four tires in that case it just could be more pronouced in the passenger side. Case closed.

Awesome! Enjoy that overnight snow? lol and im going to either go to delta v motorsports in downtown richmond (good friends with Glenn the owner) or momentum autoworks in Ashland (good friends with joe one of the techs). Also have a buddy that wants to help me do it whos also a tech but i just dont want to have to deal with it to be honest.

 

<-----------------click here

 

I might be quick tongued and blunt; but I did help you!
glad you're satisfied!!

 

lol! Sadly yes, -50* air temp. Had to drive from Clear AFS to Eielson AFB (100ish miles) for a mandatory military function.
In the Fairbanks area, everyone has a special 3-plug extension cord to plug in three things at once:
1. Engine block heater
2. Oil pan heater
3. Battery blanket heater

Didn't have the TL then, but rather a 3-yr-old 4WD Explorer. The extreme weather cost me $700 IIRC. It was just out of warranty. A $1 rubber hose cracked that fed oil to the transfer case. 4WD system failed. Ford agreed to pay half, meaning it was really a $1400 bill.

To get back to flat-spotting, driving in Alaska at around -70* or so, some tires actually "break" if you go over railroad tracks too hard. I think only truckers and drunks drove in that kind of weather, so roughly 90% of the population. :0

Glad you got your problem figured out Nismo!

 

You went to firestone?!...

 

^ I thought about that too. Kinda like the fox guarding the hen house. Of course Firestone is gonna say whatever gets them out of spending money. Nismo will have his final answer when the weather warms up. The tires should be fine at that point...

 

Hmm.. i didnt realize firestone was so hilarious. I guess when you see they have tires onsale for the weekend that are usually 150ish at the store for 110 AND they have a buy three get one free special with free alignment is somehow hilarious. Jokes on me? I guess i didnt want to put 600 dollars worth of tires on a car i use only to put miles on for work. I could use nicer tires on my newly built 400 awhp wrx i just built or maybe my 2010 camaro ss2 thats been paid off since day one..

 

Sorry, i just let things like what Majofo said get to me.

 

Is your WRX a "9 second daily driver?" If you're such a rich guy, why are you buying shitty tires like Firestones?

 

Far from rich, i save my money.. and my wrx isnt my dd , my TL is. And id be shocked if it where a 9 second car concidering wrxs with my similar set up run high 11's low 12's.

 

firestoned.

 

In his defense a 9 second DD will make anyone poor.